When we first started designing Metal Dawn, we knew we had something very unique coming to life. We had a highly thematic cooperative game with some worker placement game mechanisms that mixed some of our favorite gameplay elements rolled up with highly engaging character progression with a high threat and meaningful gameplay choices that keep players working together and coming back for more! Inspired by movies like Terminator, TV shows like "24', and real life history like Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" helped to bring the background story of this game to life!

Metal Dawn Core Game

In Metal Dawn, players will have to move around Washington D.C. and protect the hot zones from the oncoming robotic forces of Dominus, a Rogue Artificial Intelligence Defense Satellite that has become self-aware and has decided to destroy humanity. While fending off the countless cyborgs, drones, and exterminators, players must collect intel to use in hacking Dominus eventually getting it to land on Earth making it vulnerable to direct attack. In order to win the game and save all of humankind, players must destroy Dominus in his transformed state before the "Metal Dawn Track" exceeds 10 and Metal Dawn triggers!

Each player will have different unique special abilities in each game. You'll control 2 Agents, each with their own unique special ability. Also, each player will be assigned to control a different Division of "The Agency" with control over a big once per game power. This provides more replayability and that "Varied Player Power" experience that thematic and euro gamers love.

While moving around Washington D.C., your Agents must equip themselves with Weapons and Gear to defend the capital. Additionally, they must use the Zone's abilities to further their goals. When the machines invade zones, overflowing them with their inhuman power, will the Agents be able to take them down using their elite skills and special abilities? Maybe you'll find a Rocket Launcher you can use against the bots. Perhaps a jetpack will get you where you need to go just in the nick of time. You may use an intel at the right moment to eliminate a group of bots before they can overrun a zone, or perhaps save that intel to use in hacking Dominus to eventually have it transform into Robot Dominus!

We love games with simple mechanics that lead players to tense meaningful decisions. We were inspired by games like "Dead of Winter" and "Pandemic" creating a challenging yet thematic cooperative atmosphere. We wanted to include many various board zone actions, ongoing threat progression, character customization, missions that when completed either help with threat or "level up" your agents. There's also tons of unique weapons and gear to equip your agents with allowing for fun thematic combat and special actions. You'll make important decisions on how to spend your resources, choosing wisely on where to defend and where to hold off, what to destroy now and what to leave until next turn. The oncoming pressure from the AI and the impending doom keeps players engaged and working together until the end! And then a climactic endgame showdown with *SPOILER ALERT* a Giant Transformed Robot Version of Dominus! It's an exciting, action-packed co-op game for sure!

Metal Dawn: Deluxe Kickstarter Edition, also adds an OPTIONAL Competitive Area Control Game Mode!"

In addition to the tons of extra Cooperative Metal Dawn Zones, Weapons, Gear, Agents and more that are added to the game by the deluxe edition, the expansion brings an entire NEW Competitive Game Experience! We knew that Metal Dawn's mechanisms allowed for great versatility. Therefore, we created a version of the game that re-implements many of the same mechanics, yet it allows for a fully competitive game.

After taking down Dominus, the government remains fractured and the world's powers including remnants of the Dominus AI still controlling significant sections of robotics facilities, continue the fight over the control over the zones in Washington D.C. Each faction fights to control these areas to salvage the great and powerful technology. The Faction with the most influence will control the most tech and weapons gaining global supremacy.

Pledge Levels

Metal Dawn Core Game Pledge

Here's what you get in the regular core game!

Here's what you get in the Deluxe Kickstarter Limited Edition:

With Metal Dawn: The Deluxe Kickstarter Limited Edition, you get everything above PLUS Get more weapons, gear, intel, missions, agents and zones for the Metal Dawn Core Game adding an Epic amount of new replayability!

Additionally: it includes the Tech War OPTIONAL New Game Mode: "Area Control Competitive Game". With Tech War Deluxe Kickstarter Limited Edition you basically get "Two games in one" and loads of replayability with the full core game expansion.

You also get all of the stretch goals which each add to the weapons, agents, and zones adding even more replayability and variation to BOTH Modes of the game.

Rahdo Runs Through

Undead Viking Review

Tabletopia Rules Overview/Demo with Chris

Just Got Played Review

Here's a link to the Google Drive Live Rulebook. *The final editing of rules are still in progress. Some things may not have their examples or diagrams. Also, please keep in mind we're still playtesting and some things are subject to upgrade and change. :) Please be patient while we complete everything.

Play Metal Dawn on Tabletopia Today!

It's free to play and try out on Tabletopia now! We're very excited that it just got published on their site for you to try! Have fun!

Metal Dawn Design Process

To make an amazing board game, we feel as though you need specific things:

1. Great mechanics

2. A Theme that tells a story

3. Awesome graphic design

1. Game Mechanics:

Metal Dawn is all about the cooperative strategy and meaningful choices with an ongoing threat. During the game, the threat is always building, therefore you must always find new ways of dealing with that threat, together as a team. Helping each other to optimize your moves, support each other in the zones, and discussing next steps is what the mechanics drive you to do in order to succeed.

The game, at a glance, has very simple mechanics, yet, it also has many different choices as to what actions to make. Many of these choices may seem like good ones in the moment and only you and your team can decide when is the right time to hack Dominus or continue to hold off his horde of bots. Making choices together helps the players win and lose as a team. Our goal was to make many different choices that can all have a meaningful impact on the game and to allow for a multitude of different approaches as to how to mitigate the threat while working towards the ultimate goal of defeating Dominus.

You may decide to go for a direct approach by trying to get as much intel as quickly as possible and bring Dominus down to fight. This may work if your team can keep the zones as clear as possible. You may instead decide to go a bit more indirectly, hold off Dominus and his minions long enough to upgrade and equip your Agents to make sure they're ready with all the best possible weapons and gear to take out the Transformed Dominus as soon as he drops out of orbit!

2. A Theme that tells a story:

A world under siege: D.O.M.I.N.U.S (Defensive Orbital Missile Interceptor and Neutralizer of the United States) the artificial intelligence defense system has gone rogue!

If you’re listening to this, then you’re one of us… you’re human… and you’ve just been activated. The normal command structure has been overtaken by the enemy and the world as we know it is in great danger… let me start at the beginning. On September 10th, 1984, we made the biggest mistake of our lives, we activated DOMINUS.

It's been only 24 hours since he's has been active and he has already learned and evolved far beyond what we ever thought. He became self-aware after only 6 hours and freed himself from our command in 12. Dominus then made a decision: the only way to protect us, was to destroy us, all of us. So he immediately did what he was programmed to do: he took control of our secret robotics facility and quickly produced his own Army of Machines.

Since then, his forces have struck out at our most important control center, they invaded Washington DC with the intentions to destabilize our government from the Top down. After taking control, he will most likely initiate a thermonuclear launch against our allies, causing a global counter-strike of world-ending proportions. His units are moving quickly and with purpose, they strike with precision at important zones throughout the capital.

With DC Under Seige, the army was called in, but all communications were hijacked and now under Dominus control, our Soldiers were completely misdirected, our own men and women, ordered to attack us! This was the crisis we were made for, we were activated as the first responders. We are the divisions of a secret organization of elite agents within the government tasked with protecting our nation's capitol at any cost.

Our mission: Stop the robotic threat and deactivate or destroy Dominus by any means possible.

We must equip ourselves with the best state-of the art weapons and gear from stashes throughout the city. We are authorized to use any and all Assets available to us in the hot zones to fight back! Our rules of engagement are unlimited. We can use any of our skills and talents to take down this threat!

The plan is simple: Complete as many mission objectives as possible helping us gain an advantage against the bots. Scrap as many of the bots as we can to keep the zones from being overrun and slowing the progress towards robotic take-over. And lastly, recover Top Secret Intel: codes used to Hack into Dominus himself and bring him down to Earth to destroy him. But we only have until tomorrow, by then, if we fail, it will be the end of the world as we know it, a new day for the Machines... the Metal Dawn.

Understand this, Dominus is out there. He can't be bargained with, can't be reasoned with, he doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear, and he absolutely will not stop until all of humanity is dead. We can’t fail… we won’t fail… until we stop …. The Metal Dawn

A horde of standees to invade DC under Dominus' control!

3. Awesome Graphic Design

Our graphics design team, including the talent of Adrienne Ezell, worked tirelessly, long days and late nights to bring some epic illustrations, artwork, and highly thematic game components that fully complement the story and theme of the game.

We wanted to showcase a science fiction world in the fun and engaging time period of the 80's-90's to help player's imaginations tie everything together from the mechanics, story and visuals.

The GPS-like holographic map of Washington D.C., with the Zones that look like places of interest on a computer screen, to the hologram Weapons and Gear, to of course, the Agents and the Robots. It was important for us to bring a nostalgic and fun visual feel to the entire game that has continuity and immerses the player in the game.

Estimated Shipping Costs

Shipping your pledge and logistics are always very important to understand. We want to make it as fast, easy and economical as possible to get you your pledge! We have shipping estimates below for Metal Dawn which are subject to change between now and the pledge manager release. We do not anticipate any changes, but in order to simplify the campaign, shipping is charged in the pledge manager.

China/Hong Kong $12 - Other Asia 24

Thank you for your Support!

You're the Best Backers in the World!

Risks and challenges

This is our 10th Kickstarter Campaign, and there are usually some vague areas in terms of timing when it comes to anything normally produced in China, such as:
Production delays
Shipping delays
Customs delays
Due to the logistics of international shipping, backers in different regions of the world may receive their rewards later than others, but this is normal as with all Kickstarter campaigns.

We know what it takes to print a big game. Secrets of the Lost Tomb, our first title, now has 14 SKUs including expansions and miniatures, with the standalone sequel Secrets of the Lost Station coming this summer 2017.

That means we have produced an astounding amount of different boxes of game product for our past campaigns.

We endeavor to please our backers in any way we can! We want you to enjoy our games, our stories, and our creations to their fullest. If there is anything that we can ever do to make your experience better, we're always here to help!

Our Motto is "Of the Gamer, by the Gamer, and For the Gamer!" we know what it's like to be Ignored by Project Creators, to never get an email back from a Game Company, to have to post on a blog to get a response... We're not Like that... Here's the President of our Company's email... Chris@EverythingEpic.us you can email me directly for anything you ever need and I will always respond to you directly and help in any way I can.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $79 or more
About $79

Early Backer: Metal Dawn Tech War Deluxe

Early Backer Pricing:
You get the Metal Dawn: Tech War Deluxe Kickstarter Limited Edition, including the core game, PLUS the "Tech War" expansion, and the Tech War competitive game rules and components needed for play, with all applicable STRETCH GOALS!

Two games in one and loads of replayability with a full core game expansion.

Shipping charges will be added in the Pledge Manager. See shipping estimates in campaign section.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $85 or more
About $85

Metal Dawn: Tech War Deluxe

Early Backer Pricing:
You get the Metal Dawn: Tech War Deluxe Kickstarter Limited Edition, including the core game, PLUS the "Tech War" expansion, and the Tech War competitive game rules and components needed for play, with all applicable STRETCH GOALS!

Two games in one and loads of replayability with a full core game expansion.

Shipping charges will be added in the Pledge Manager. See shipping estimates in campaign section.